latracey

I'm not a fan of booing your home team in their home stadium, but I understand that the booing that happened in the Cal game was directed at coaches who are intent on "shutting out the outside noise"; even though a lot of that "noise" is being made by the people whose support they depend on. That said, I agree with Mr. FishDuck. It appears that booing is the only way fans are able to express their frustration and displeasure with the program to coaches who actively tune out the other avenues fans have to express their opinions. I'm also not a fan of coaches who throw temper tantrums directed at players and officials. I put it in the same category of booing as far as low class behavior. It shows poor leadership and a lack of self discipline in my humble opinion; two things that you'd hope your coach would be trying to model to his players.

I can't resist this chance to be an armchair coach. The first play that I found frustrating was the coaching decision to go for it on 4th and 2 in the first quarter with the ball well within field goal range. How many times are we going to leave points on the field only to have those points come back and haunt us later in the game? When will Cristobal learn?? I also agree that the last pass AB lofted into the end zone that was easily picked off in the 4th quarter was a play that shouldn't have even been called at that juncture in the game, especially considering that Oregon was leading and in field goal range. The objective should have been to safely run the ball again to eat up as much clock as possible and then kick the field goal. That all said, it was a great win for the Ducks against a good team on the road. KT#5 is a force of disruption, and Travis Dye has become the money man in the red zone. I was glad he yelled for a running play right before he scored his first TD. DJ James final interception was a thing of pure beauty. He's come a long way from his bone headed air rifle incident. Go Ducks !!

It's true that Moorhead compared this year's statistics with the statistics of the 2019 team, but he didn't do it to air frustrations with the present system; he was trying to make the point that this team's offense, and Anthony Brown, isn't/aren't as bad as many are making it out to be. His point was that the Pac 12 Champion and Rose Bowl winning 2019 team was lead by NFL great Justin Herbert whose statistics are comparable to AB's statistics so far this year. I'm sorry, but it's a point that's completely lost on me. I saw Justin Herbert play and I've also seen Anthony Brown play and, sorry coach, but Justin Herbert was/is a much better quarterback in every single comparison you want to make. Herbert had a much better vision of the field and was better at checking off receivers, made much better RPO decisions, was a much more accurate passer, and was much faster when he decided to take off and run. Plus, he had the good sense to slide at the end of his runs that didn't end up out of bounds. What Moorhead didn't point out is that most of the teams Oregon has played so far have losing records and have not had very good defenses. It's going to be interesting to see how AB and Oregon's offense do against the better teams on their schedule starting with their game on Saturday against UCLA.

I'm with Mr. FishDuck. The similarities I see between what Oregon's offense looked like with Arroyo and what the "new and Improved" offense looks like under "offensive genius" Joe Moorhead are too numerous to be a coincidence. It's become painfully obvious over the course of the Cristobal era that the offense run by Oregon is heavily influenced by the notions of Mario Cristobal. Sadly, I'm guessing that Moorhead leaving to be replaced by anyone will result in more of the same as long as Cristobal is at the helm.

Rumor has it that Cristobal is one of the top names being considered by LSU. I can't imagine that after paying off Coach O that LSU will be able to afford Cristobal's buy out, but he's definitely being considered. Could Cristobal be enticed to go coach one of the major players in the SEC? One thing is for certain, Cristobal is starting to feel the heat of unsatisfied Duck fans whose criticism of his coaching decisions and players has definitely amped up this season. People in the know have said that Mario was FURIOUS that fans booed his team in Autzen on Saturday night, which isn't surprising. The sledding ahead is going to be interesting.

I'm thinking John Gruden is probably done with football in any capacity for a long, long time. As far as Mariota goes, he has to conquer the injury bug and, at this point, it's anybody's guess if he will. Gruden really liked Mariota and made it a point to keep him around. I doubt that that will be the case with the incoming coaching regime.